The loss of Andre Previn hit me today a bit more harder than
usual; when a personality of my past and present passes away. More and more today it seems.
Mr. Previn with his ease and charm and his immense musical
gifts, was a presence in my life for many years.
He bestrode three worlds of music- the Hollywood scoring, jazz
and the classical world.
As a child of the movies in the 1950’s/60’s, I was well aware
of the glorious music coming out of Hollywood. In fact, I believe that music
for the movies is an important part of our musical culture as is the world of
classical music.
I rate the great pioneers of Hollywood music – Steiner, Waxman,
Young, Bernstein ( both Elmer and Leonard), Goldsmith, North, Gold, Newman,
Tiomkin, Friedhofer and so many more, right up there with Handel, Beethoven, Mozart..(
forget Mozart,) and my all-time favorite – Ravel.
I have attended in my 70 plus years – hundreds of classical
music concerts and yet there is only one that has stayed with me as so fresh
and so earthshaking as the one conducted with the Los Angeles Symphony
orchestra with Andre Previn on the podium, it was Ravel's ‘Daphne and Chloe.’
Musically speaking, classical music that is, for me, that was the
greatest performance in my life, do in no part to Andre Previn’s conducting. Maybe
because Ravel is highly romantic, and Mr. Previn came out of the Hollywood
romantic era of films, that he had that gift.
I will miss him dearly….
